


troubles swept

by staraflur



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staraflur/pseuds/staraflur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 205, "Cottonmouth"</p>
            </blockquote>





	troubles swept

  
Boyd’s dragged in still black with coal dust and looking more defeated than Raylan’s even seen him, more than when he’d stumbled into the carnage of Raylan’s motel room and more even than sitting in the ruins of his daddy’s cabin, his father unmoving outside.

He says only what he needs to and looks like he cares even less. Raylan listens to the bones of a story Boyd’s outlining and wouldn’t want to believe it except for the copy of Shelby’s statement, the innocuous photocopy on the table that corroborates the whole tale and that also says, in plain black-and-white, courier font: _Boyd Crowder saved my life_.

Of course, it also says _Boyd Crowder shot a man_ and _Boyd Crowder blew two more up_.

AUSA David Vazquez asks all the same questions he usually does, but then instead of _and why did you kill Bobby Joe_ or some other luckless innocent bastard, he has to say _why didn’t you kill Shelby_ , and perhaps no one is more surprised to hear it than Boyd himself.

He looks at Raylan. Looks down at his blackened hands and back up again. “I suppose I have my daddy to thank for that,” he tells Raylan.

\------

Art confers hastily with Vasquez when someone finally suggests Boyd clean up in the bathroom. No one but Boyd and Raylan know it won’t much help—it takes a lot more than five minutes under a sink to scrub coal off.

Art’s hissing something about felony murder, but Vasquez counters with something else about working against the conspiracy. He says without the cooperation of the armored car company and the mine owners, both of which had their own reasons not to, the United States government doesn’t actually have much to prosecute on.

“Fer chrissake,” Art moans. “Raylan, take the bastard back to Harlan.”

\----

Raylan fled Harlan County like a bat out of hell. He’d seen what it did to people, what it had done to his mother, and he’d dreamed one night about that mine collapsing around him, burying him, burying Boyd halfway through “fire in the hole!” and he couldn’t see anything for himself there but the bleak darkness of the mine, closing in.

When he looked at Boyd’s mug shot, Boyd’s face mirroring the defiant, careless expression he’d seen on most of the cons he’d tracked down, Raylan had felt that same old swoop of defeat.

Boyd’s apparently satisfied with staring out the window like there’s something to see in the inked-out night, his eyes still behind the thick glasses.

He hadn’t worn glasses before Raylan left.

“Did you ever mean to go through with it?”

Boyd slants a look at him without moving his head. “I’m not certain it would be in my best interests to answer your questions, Raylan,” he says, slow and cool and flat.

“I’m not asking to hold it against you, dammit!”

He hadn’t meant to get riled up about this.

“That’s a flattering sentiment,” Boyd replies. “Not certain I believe it, or that you could help yourself. But just out of curiosity, did you mean personally, or in a court of law?”

Raylan’s never made a habit of hollow denials, and the truth is he’s not sure he _could_ mean it, just as Boyd suspected.

Boyd sighs and finally turns his head, like he’s actually giving Raylan his full attention. “You tell _me_ something,” he says. “In Miami. Hell, when Daddy took Ava. You probably coulda accomplished the same goals without riding’ in alone, guns ablaze like you were John Wayne himself.”

Raylan watches the arced zenith of the headlight’s beam as it leaps forward into the night. He’s getting pretty sick of the drive to Harlan. All over again.

“What I think,” Boyd says, “is sometimes you just don’t think anyone else can get it done same as you can. You never have.”

“I guess if there’s one thing that’s always been _your_ purview, it’s powder,” Raylan says. Misdirects.

“Seem so,” Boyd agrees, absent like Raylan’s lost him again. He’s so silent the rest of the time that Raylan’d think he was asleep if he couldn’t see otherwise.

When he slides into Bo Crowder’s driveway, Ava opens the front door immediately. Waiting.

Boyd sighs, visibly relaxing into the seat. Raylan wonders what he’s been so tense over, what he’s been anticipating.

Ava watches from the porch. Boyd looks back at her for a long second, but Raylan can’t tell if they actually meet eyes.

Boyd clicks open his seatbelt, palms the handle on the door and lets in the racket of Kentucky night.

“I know this seems hard for you to understand, Rayland, but I’m hardly accustomed to having a federal lawman around to help me fix my problems.”

\------

He’s halfway around the creek, nearly back to the highway and back to where things make a little—only a little—more sense when he gets fed up with all the leftover questions in his head and jerks the wheel around viciously.

Ava answers the door in a nightgown and robe, face going from wary to weary when she sees him.

“Honestly, Raylan,” she says, and then, “Boyd’s upstairs,” when he can’t even muster up an apology. He hasn’t felt this speechless since he met Winona.

There’s only one closed door and he jerks it open without knocking.

The room is sparse and impersonal outside of the enormous stereo and a stack of books. It’s not even like they’re the same things Boyd’s always had, but the juxtapositon of them, and Boyd still pinked from a shower, kick him in the gut straight back twenty years.

Boyd’s staring up from a thick, well-worn book, waiting for Raylan to recover himself. His legs are crossed at the ankles, still the boniest ankles Raylan’s ever seen.

When he doesn’t, Boyd begins. “I can’t say I was expecting you, Raylan.” No one else says his name like that. “You do recall that you took your gun back from me, the same time as you rang my bell with that right hook.”

“I do recall,” Raylan confirms. “Because it’s evidence now. Can’t even use it.” He’s still standing in the doorway like he’s casing the place, checking for weapons, places someone could hide.

“I’m sure they’d give you another if you’d only stop whinin and ask nicely.” Boyd closes the book, but keeps his page marked with two fingers. He’d always liked to read, but it hadn’t been something Bo put too much stock in. Raylan wonders when Boyd’d stopped caring, about that.

“Why did you say that? In the car?”

Boyd lays the book across his chest before he answers. “Before you sit down, get me that Advil from the bathroom, please. It’s on the sink.”

Raylan tosses it over, and Boyd lets it land on the faded blanket before he picks it up. He takes four as Raylan settles, awkward, on the opposite corner of the mattress on the floor.

“Think you’re only supposed to go with two,” Raylan advises.

Boyd gives him a look. “What’s the most you’ve ever taken, Raylan?”

The most Raylan’s ever taken is seven, once when he was shooting on a shoulder he’d near wrenched out of its socket getting himself out of some twist ties, but Boyd doesn’t need to know that.

He wants Boyd to answer his question, anyway.

Boyd must know, cause he frowns, the same peaked little frown he used to when they served meatloaf for lunch at school—when Boyd went to school.

“I got to thinking, in the car, about what it was you had expected me to do. I thought surely you would know this type of man—the way they got after me, it was clear no wasn’t an option. Not when they persisted after everything I tried. And it weren’t as though I could just call up law enforcement, not with me being who I am and they being who they are.” He raises his eyebrows. “So I got to thinking, that perhaps, and despite the fact you’d made it clear you were determined to think the very worst of me, you expected me to come to you. Not before, but after you heard, you thought I should have.”

Raylan doesn’t like people assuming things about him, putting words in his mouth and thoughts in his head like they know shit about him. It’s part of what makes him so damn mouthy, gets him in so much trouble. He just bristles at it, immediately and no matter what the intent behind it.

He opens his mouth to tell Boyd Crowder where to stick it, cause he’s heard Boyd talk a lot of shit but, this is up there, this is—

“It’s become obvious to me,” Boyd says, stopping Raylan’s thoughts flat, “that two men should never expect, after everything we’ve been through, to just be able to pretend the other doesn’t exist.”

“Plenty of men survive mining accidents,” Raylan reminds him. Not sure why he’s playing dumb. Daring Boyd to bring it up first, maybe.

“That’s not all I mean and you know it, Raylan Givens.” Boyd’s never been one to back down from a challenge. Especially not a challenge from him.

“Not all you mean?” Raylan parrots, pushes off with one knee so he’s across the mattress in one stretch of his legs, straddling Boyd’s knees. He puts a hand over Boyd’s heart, just under the most recent gunshot. “This what you mean?” he asks.

“Certainly part of it,” Boyd says. Raylan leans forward, feels Boyd’s heart jump under his fingers. Boyd’s eyes are closed. He’s finally abandoned the book.

“How’d you reconcile this, anyways? With some of your more, ah, _Christian_ leanings?” He’s being cruel; Boyd’s not reacting how he expected.

But at this he looks right back at Raylan, narrows his eyes.

“I believe my situation when we met again should provide you with something of an idea.”

Raylan’s starting to think Boyd’s not going to respond, not how he used to, and the flood of brashness, bravado, that led him into this particular position is starting to recede. But Boyd’s hands, previously flat by his sides, are curling against Raylan’s knees, hot through his jeans.

It’s enough for the impulse to flare up again, and he surges forward with it, catching Boyd’s mouth with his own. Boyd kisses the way he always did: lush and deep and wild, too much feeling. Boyd always feels too much, when he lets himself feel anything at all. He always bites too hard and thumbs the skin behind Raylan’s ear in apology, digs his fingers into Raylan’s flanks like a man holding on against a tornado. His lips are wet, paralyzing, and the taste of toothpaste fades under Raylan’s tongue.

The first time they’d done this, they’d been so drunk on shine Raylan had barely remembered it the next say, and it had been easy to just lay the blame on liquor and bluster a little more about going to Audrey’s. But later were the other times, times like this one—where he knows he’s just sliding both hands under Boyd’s shirt, grinding like an artless teenager down against Boyd’s dick cause he wants to, cause he feels like there’s no other option in the world right now.

He wants to flatten Boyd on his back and hike up his knees, wants to shove his face into the hair at the nape of Boyd’s neck and settle between the backs of his thighs, wants to know if it could possible feel near anywhere near as good as he remembers.

“You’re absolutely the most dangerous thing in Harlan County, Boyd Crowder,” Raylan says, muffled into the hollow of Boyd’s throat. He can’t smell anything but the spreading scent of soap and sweat.

“Think I know a lot of people who’d disagree with you on that one, Raylan Givens.” Boyd says, pulling Raylan’s shirt over his head with his right hand.

\------

It’s apparent as soon as he wakes, from the crick in his neck and twinge in the arm trapped under him, that he’s far too old to be waking up at dawn with his face mashed in Boyd’s neck. He rolls onto his back, right arm dragging across Boyd’s stomach.

He’s woken up in more than one compromising position since he came back to Kentucky, but this just might be the goddamn stupidest one of all. No might about it.

“You remember that time,” Boyds asks, “after your last game, we went to the quarry?”

Raylan does, because it was not only the last game of baseball he’d ever play but also the first after the money to school didn’t come through, to Arlo’s gloating vindication and Aunt Helen’s accepting sadness. Raylan’s endless, consuming flood of defeat and frustration and sadness and rage and everything else he’d ever associate with Harlan County.

He can’t even remember, now, whether they’d won or lost, just remembers driving Bo Crowder’s truck after, roaring down the highway til he saw the signs for Boyd County. Boyd grinned in the passenger seat, then they followed more signs and ended up with nothing but the endless sea of stars above and a depthless chasm of black in front. They threw rocks down it until they ran out, and Raylan attached a name to every one. _Arlo_ was the first, the one he listened hardest for the echoing, heavy splash as it hit the water, somewhere far, far below.

 _Bo_ was next, but he never told Boyd. _Boyd_ never came, though he may’ve been the only person in Harlan who didn’t.

When the sun streaked into the sky, it showed the pit wasn’t near as deep as it had seemed in the dark. Something about seeing the water’s surface, calm despite all the brimstone they’d rained down on it the night before, shot too bitter through Raylan for him to stand it anymore.

Boyd was sacked out next to him, and when he opened his eyes, the morning struck them clear green, bottomless like a quarry in the night.

Sometimes, with Boyd, Raylan was content with Harlan County. One person who understood him, well, it seemed to be more than most had.

“Let’s go home,” Raylan said.

  


**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah... It's been... like 6 months since I really wrote anything. FEELS SO CRAZY. And scary, haha.
> 
> This is unbetaed cause I know about one person who watches this show and it's the middle of the night, so if there's any horrible mistakes or canon issues, please tell me. As it is, I had around 18 hours before it became totally defunct hahah and I just got antsy.
> 
> So yeah. Uh. WATCH THIS SHOW YOU GUYS. IT'S KILLER.


End file.
